be; of a cultivation and intelligence to fit him to be any man's
companion, and a simplicity like that of a child. You remember his
predecessor--so dissatisfied, so selfish, so lazy, so censorious, so
unjust to every person and thing around him, and yet so exacting; and,
at the same time, so----"

"What? Thus far you have drawn his character well; I should like to hear
the remainder."

"I have said more than I ought already; for one has an idea that, by
bringing a clergyman into disrepute, it brings religion and the church
into discredit, too. A priest must be a _very_ bad man to have injurious
things said of him, in this country, Hugh."

"That is, perhaps, true. But you like Mr. Warren better than him who has
left you?"

"A thousand times, and in all things. In addition to having a most pious
and sincere pastor, _we_ have an agreeable and well-bred neighbour, from
whose mouth, in the five years that he has dwelt here, I have not heard
a syllable at the expense of a single fellow-creature. You know how it
is apt to be with the other clergy and ours, in the country--for ever at
swords' points; and if not actually quarrelling, keeping up a hollow
peace."

"That is only too true--or used to be true, before I went abroad."

"And it is so now, elsewhere, I'll answer for it, though it be so no
longer here. Mr. Warren and Mr. Peck seem to live on perfectly amicable
terms, though as little alike at bottom as fire and water."

"By the way, how do the clergy of the different sects, up and down the
country, behave on the subject of anti-rent?"

"I can answer only from what I hear, with the exception of Mr. Warren's
course. _He_ has preached two or three plain and severe sermons on the
duty of honesty in our worldly transactions, one of which was from the
tenth commandment. Of course he said nothing of the particular trouble,
but everybody must have made the necessary application of the
home-truths he uttered. I question if another voice has been raised, far
and near, on the subject, although I have heard Mr. Warren say the
movement threatens more to demoralize New York than anything that has
happened in his time."

"And the man down at the village?"

"Oh, he goes, of course, with the majority. When was one of that set
ever known to oppose his parish, in anything?"

"And Mary is as sound and as high-principled as her father?"

"Quite so; though there has been a good deal said about the necessity of
Mr. Warren's remo